Bard's life

Our stay in Monmouthshire has been a happy one, with breathtaking scenery, constant sunshine and endlessly blue skies.  These skies are home to the Red Kite, a magnificent bird once regarded as threatened, whose recovery and regeneration is a credit to Welsh conservationists. Made for the air, the Kite is a joy to watch. I can understand how Dedalus and his son, Icarus, might have sought to emulate it. ICARUS I am falling from high but they do not notice. The air, through wings that promised much, keens like a mourner. Creeping ants below evolve to shepherd, plo w man, angler. I fall unseen. Someone will dream it later. I have no time to scream. The water is hard as stone.  

Since I'm currently visiting Abergavenny in sunny Wales and since my visit happens to coincide with the start of the 2018 Abergavenny Festival of Cycling , I've decided to feature this poem from my recently-published collection, Stone Witness. CYCLE The living world sails by, complete: strange images engulf her; sounds pour into her; she is caressed by air, safe in the old bike seat behind her father, the firm mounds of his buttocks against her chest. A young child, perched like a nestling, in the metal-framed basket-seat: his firstborn.  A small miracle, the proud father thinks his offspring, and to him, in the noisy street, she clings, tight as a barnacle. He pedals hard, pursued by time: like roulette wheels, the bike-wheels whirl. A breeze, around her soft hair, sings with lyrical, unreasoned rhyme. Euphoria engulfs the girl: her arms reach out like stubby wings.

I find it interesting and disturbing, in equal measure, that two people’s memories of the same events can be totally different, so much so that the very notion of objective history is flawed.  MACKEY'S SISTER   You must be? She said my surname. Her voice, low and sweet. I answered, Yes , and thought , s he looks just like him. Jimmy Mackey was my brother , she told me. You know that he died?   I know, I heard , I mumbled. So sorry for your loss . He thought the world of you , she told me with a smile. This damn school brought him so much grief but you saved him from the worst of it . He really was in awe of you : h is truest frien d ... Her words tailed off. I pictured him: the crooked specs and wounded stare, the pallid, vulnerable skin, already marked for victimhood. Fourteen years old with four more years of hell stretching out before him. Wee Mackey. A kid with Hurt Me printed on his puny chest. I bullied him. We all did that. I was less harsh than most and once...

This piece of Flash Fiction emerged from the ruins of a failed poem on a similar subject: a paean to the animalistic power of the sea and the almost-ecstasy of almost letting go.   SWIMMER They’ve been walking for over an hour and the heat has become oppressive. Patrick leads the way, as always, Jill and Roger at his heels while she, grown bored and weary, begins to fall behind. The group make their way round Bordeaux bay and follow the footpath along a stretch of water between the coast and the small outcrop of Houmet Paradis, enjoying the view of Herm and the smaller islands in the distance. She pauses, seduced by the notion of cool water on her skin. The others have gone ahead but, recklessly, she finds herself drawn to the water and, within moments, she’s removed her boots and socks, then shed her top and hiking-shorts and, dressed only in bra and knickers, begun to wade in. The temperature is shocking at first but moments after she’s dived it’s become tolerable and the se...

Whilst visiting Devon, Jane and I travelled to the church of St Augustine in Heanton to seek out the grave of Edward Capern, the postman poet, known locally as The Devonshire Burns. Born in 1819, Edward worked in the lace industry until failing eyesight forced him to seek alternative employment with the Post Office as a letter-carrier. His route lay between Bideford and Appledore and the job required him to make a return trip between the towns with a wait of two hours, to allow time for people to reply to letters he had just delivered because there were no post-boxes in those days. It was during this time that he began writing poems, often on the backs of the envelopes he would later deliver. Edward Capern became a regular contributor to the 'Poet's Corner' of the North Devon Journal and his submissions became so popular that in 1856 a group of subscribers, including Alfred Tennyson, Charles Dickens, and Charles Kingsley, enabled him to publish his first collection of poems...

I find it incredibly sad to delve into old photograph albums and be reminded of how swiftly time passes and how rapidly a fresh faced youth becomes a tired old man. The theme of Guernsey's June Open Mic even t is "Time " and, had I been able to take part, this is one of the poems I would have read.     SNAPSHOT A dapper man, old fashioned hat, formality in clothes and stance, and by his polished shoes, a cat, as he glares at the lens, askance. It must be after the Great War in Nineteen Twenty-Three or Four. My grandfather. I only knew him in his sad, declining years: a dodderer, with tie askew and all too quickly moved to tears perhaps for what we all must lose that cannot be restored by booze.